Scarlet Tide
by cuthalion
Summary: Elena finds out about the consequences of changing your own iron rules... the hard way. Set at the end of episode 17: "Let The Right One In", and written for my lovely daughter who made me watch the show and actually enjoy it, together with her.


**Scarlet Tide**  
by _Cúthalion_

____________________  
_

_For my daughter  
____________________

My knees hurt.

Funny, for my wrist should be hurting much more, shouldn't it? The two small, angry red wounds are still throbbing... a dull pain, somewhat detached. At least the bleeding has stopped, and the memory of Stefan's chalk white face and the piercing sensation when his fangs cut through my skin has faded into distance.

To be honest, it doesn't bother me very much... not as much as it probably _should_ bother me, that is. The Elena I was only a few months ago would have screamed blue murder, turned to the police, gone mad at the sight of her lover staking his enemy with blood-spattered hands and a horribly inhuman face.

The Elena I was until the day I met Stefan Salvatore would've done all that, and more. The Elena I am now does nothing at all. She looks down at her wrist and desperately tries to believe that Stefan is right, that she only saved his life and that he only saved hers, and that some day all will be okay again.

And then the sound of my cell phone cuts through the protective fog, and only a few words make the monstrous illusion my life has become crash to pieces.

_They've found Vicky. _

I saw her die. I knew that Damon disposed of her body and never asked him where he hid it ... and it was me who begged him to wipe out Jer's memory of Vicky's death and replace it with a merciful lie when Stefan claimed that he wasn't strong enough to do it.

I know how much Damon lives up to his name, I've seen what he's capable of. I've seen him kill his victims as easily and casually as others swat a fly... and still I laid Jer's peace of mind into his hands. What kind of human being does that make me, for heaven's sake?

I walk to my car, leaving Stefan behind and thinking of Matt. Matt who held the saddle of my pink bicycle when I made my first clumsy attempts to drive, and who dabbed the dirt and blood from my knee when I didn't manage to get around the corner safely and crashed against the wooden prize list in front of Mr. Fell's milk bar. Matt took his pocket money and bought a huge Sundae to distract me from the bruises, and ever since comfort had the sweet taste of strawberries for me.

We grew up and fell in love, but not enough... and it was never his fault. It was _me_ who didn't love _him_ enough to make the whole thing last. Poor Matt. Now he and Caroline are trying to get over the gap between the haves and the have-nots in Mystic Falls, and to build a relationship against all odds. Poor Caroline... so beautiful, so likeable and yet so terribly insecure. I only hope they can make it work.

I slip onto the driver's seat and close the door. Inside the car, the silence is very deep. My knees are still hurting... perhaps a reminder of times when I didn't bother to look beyond the surface of my peaceful hometown. Happy, innocent times when a fall from the bicycle was the worst thing that could happen to you, when friends were just friends and no monsters and the animals in the woods were only animals... albeit with sharp fangs.

I switch on the radio.

"...m_ust I accept his fate  
Or take myself far from this place  
I thought I heard a black bell toll  
A little bird did sing  
Man has no choice  
When he wants everything" _

I know that song. It's from a movie, with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, playing star-crossed lovers during Civil War, and there's no happy ending, of course. Jer caught me in front of the TV, a few weeks before the accident, and he called it a silly chick flick and laughed at me.

"_We'll rise above the scarlet tide  
That trickles down through the mountain  
And separates the widow from the bride..."_

Suddenly I'm reminded of the fact that the period of the Civil War was the time when Stefan and Damon were still young – and still _alive_ – and the uncomfortable revelation leads me directly back to this afternoon. I switch the radio off again and turn the key.

_Damon's dark, angry eyes when he told me I should stay behind, the rage only a thin layer over the bottomless fear for his brother._ Psycho or not, he really cares for him, _I thought in that moment_, _and surprisingly enough it was a tiny golden thread of comfort in the black spiderweb of my panic. _

_Stefan's bruised chest in the dark cellar that smelled of his agony, and our slow, stumbling way back to the car. His fall and the grim moment when I thought I'd lost him to a death colder and more eternal than the one he already carried in his flesh. My blood, giving him back his strength – and turning him into that stranger with the cruel face. When he hissed at me like a furious beast, I accepted for the very first time what I had tried to ignore most of the time before – that he and Damon were truly brothers in every sense of the meaning._

I'm driving through familiar streets, the faces of familiar buildings flitting past the rain-streaked side windows. It feels like a dream, and at the same time I'm painfully awake... since that moment when I heard Jer's choking voice coming out of my cell phone. _"They've found Vicky. She's dead, Elena... she's been dead all the time." _

"I know, Jer."

I'm speaking to myself. Jer's not here, he's waiting for me at Matt's place... the car is empty, I only have my battered conscience and my tired, pale face in the driving mirror as an audience for that confession.

"I knew that she was dead, and I lied to you. I lied to everyone. I told Stefan once that I couldn't bear the thought of betraying all the people I love, and now I can't stop betraying them."

The Elena I once was wouldn't have lied. The Elena I once was wouldn't have stabbed a vampire with a tranquilizer dart full of vervain, wouldn't have offered her wrist to Stefan and made him drink her blood. The Elena I once was drowned months ago... in the water, deep down in the sunken car, together with her parents.

The new Elena has told too many lies and learned too many truths... that her parents never were her parents in the first place, that her real mother chose an eternity of undead existence over a husband who's nevertheless still unable to forget her. And she has learned that deep love can make people ruthless, can make you forget every principle you ever had, every rule you ever obeyed and relied on.

I've parked under the dripping trees in front of the Donovan house. The windows are brightly lit, and Sheriff Forbes' police car is blocking the driveway. My steps are splashing in the deep puddles as I walk towards the entrance, and the door isn't locked.

It is warm inside, lamps burning, the smell of freshly brewed coffee hanging in the air. I hear murmuring voices and catch a glimpse of my brother and Tyler Lockwood, sitting on the opposite sides of a table, faces strangely alike in the same bewildered grief. But before I can turn to Jer, Matt comes out of Vicky's room, and the raw pain in his eyes hits me like a blow. He notices that I'm there, and whatever composure he was able to muster crumbles under the weight of his sorrow as he walks towards me and right into my open arms.

I hold him, his body shaking in my embrace, and over his shoulder I suddenly spy Caroline, frozen on the spot and a steaming mug in both hands. And I'm sorry that it's me he's turning to for comfort and not her, and that this must feel like yet another defeat. And I'm sorry for Matt whom I never told that I saw his sister die months ago, and I'm sorry for Jer who found a treacherous peace under Damon's spell. And I'm sorry for Vicky's mother and even for Damon with his fateful longing for a woman who never really loved him, and for Stefan whom I'll always love, no matter what, beast or not... and I won't let go, and I can't get out, and I want to scream my guilt against the rainclouds in the darkened sky.

Finally Matt sobs into my shoulder, and I would love to cry, too, but I can't, God help me, I _can't._ The old Elena would have wept with him.

The new one is too ashamed for tears.

**FINIS  
_______________________________________________________**

The song is _Scarlet Tide_, sung by Alison Krauss in the movie _Cold Mountain_.


End file.
